


Which Way Home?

by threewalls



Category: Final Fantasy XII, Vagrant Story
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, Community: trope_bingo, Crossing Timelines, Crossover, Gen, Homesickness, Ivalice, Nostalgia, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-31
Updated: 2014-05-31
Packaged: 2018-01-27 20:11:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1721075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threewalls/pseuds/threewalls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fran seeks a return to her own time; Sydney provides ambiguous assistance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Which Way Home?

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Smeltry](https://archiveofourown.org/works/156182) by [threewalls](https://archiveofourown.org/users/threewalls/pseuds/threewalls). 



> For "time travel" for trope bingo and "homesickness" for h/c bingo.
> 
> This is something of a sequel to "The Smeltry", but given that that was pretty much PWP Fran/Hardin, this can easily stand alone.

Fran spends her days more and more within the forest to the south-east of the city walls. The mist lies thick upon all areas of this rocky island, but here amongst the trees, its eddies drift cool and soft. 

But it is not the branches that cause her to wax nostalgic, but the lack of stone above her head. Where the cultists camp within the city, the sky is naught but a strip between rooftops. Archades was built with more open spaces than Lea Monde, and Fran aches for the open sky.

Fran has not left the island since she appeared here, disoriented and alone, to a young, blond, male hume with wrought metal for arms and his swarthier companion. She was not summoned, but sent from her own time to this.

Sydney was polite. Fran was from a past so distant that it was not his history, but his myth. She would have doubted if his companion, John, could speak more than two words to her in a tongue she understood. Like the bend of a river changing shape with decades upon decades of the tides of inundation, time changes the sounds of a language. 

In this forest, the wind whispers in the leaves, and it is also a language Fran does not comprehend.

Fran feels eyes behind her, turning quick with her crossbow at the ready.

Sydney's metal arms are spread expansively wide, metal palms upraised. 

"It is indeed customary to shoot the messenger who brings ill news."

No hume who speaks thus expected an answer. Fran rests her bow and waits. 

"It is the prophet's cliché to extol that the end is nigh, but the time for our preparations is at an end. I regret that I have no more time to play host. I hope that these will help you find your way."

The cloth bag contains three cabochon-cut garnets, each with an identically wide flat base. The gems are unusually warm in the hollow of her palm.

"It is said that they contain the spirit of the fallen one, Altema."

"Ultima," Fran speaks. "The high seraphim."

"Seraphim, you say?" To the garnets, Sydney adds a brilliant cut clear stone that can only be diamond. "Stones like these are said to bind a seraph's soul. Whether the seraphs are the same, that is a mystery for you to unravel."

It is a dismissal. 

Fran thanks Sydney for his hospitality and aid, and he says all that should be said in return before disappearing in a shower of light.

She has expected a conversation of this type since Sydney returned from travels beyond the city to find Fran sharing a blanket with John. She has already said her farewells, such as she can, to John. She knows what it is to love a man who knows more sharp words than soft.

Fran sets one garnet into her crossbow, holds it raised and closes her eyes. 

There is danger in such small things. It was a stone that sent her here. Not a sky stone, though it seems near enough in like: to transport not only through space but time. Balthier touched it and disappeared. What could she do but follow?

Fran once carried the espers Famfrit and Chaos in crystals only a little longer than this. Penelo once carried Ultima, though Balthier persuaded them all to destroy the stones not long after the war.

Fran feels a tug in the mist, a light pull towards the right side of the path. 

Time surely moves differently for an esper than for mortals. If she is lucky, Ultima will remember her. If she is not... 

A sky pirate makes their own luck.


End file.
